Note 4 — Chapter I

The members of this Society were—Rev. William Laughton, now Minister of St Thomas's, Greenock, in connection with the Free Church; Thomas Brown, Free Church, Kinneff; William Wilson, Free Church, Carmyllie; Horatius Bonar, Free Church, Kelso; Andrew A. Bonar, Free Church, Collace; Robert M. M'Cheyne; Alexander Somerville, Free Church, Anderston, Glasgow; John Thomson, Mariners' Free Church, Leith; Robert K. Hamilton, Madras; John Burne, for some time at Madeira; Patrick Borrowman, Free Church, Glencairn; Walter Wood, Free Church, Westruther; Henry Moncrieff, Free Church, Kilbride; James Cochrane, Established Church, Cupar; John Miller, Secretary to Free Church Special Commission; G. Smeaton, Free Church, Auchterarder; Robert Kinnear, Free Church, Moffat; and W.B. Clarke, Free Church, Half-Morton. Every meeting was opened and closed with prayer. Minutes of the discussions were kept; and the essays read were preserved in volumes. A very characteristic essay of Mr. M'Cheyne's is "Lebanon and its Scenery" (inserted in the Remains), wherein he adduces the evidence of travellers for facts and customs which he himself was afterwards to see. Often, in 1839, pleasant remembrances of these days of youthful study were suggested by what we actually witnessed; and in the essay referred to I find an interesting coincidence. He writes: "What a refreshing sight to his eye, yet undimmed with age, after resting forty years on the monotonous scenery of the desert, now to rest on Zion's olive-clad hills, and Lebanon, with its vine-clad base and overhanging forests, and towering peaks of snow!" This was the very impression on our minds when we ourselves came up from the wilderness as expressed in the Narrative, chap. 2—"May 29. Next morning we saw at a distance a range of hills, running north and south, called by the Arabs Djebel Khalie. After wandering so many days in the wilderness, with its vast monotonous plains of level sand, the sight of these distant mountains was a pleasant relief to the eye; and we thought we could understand a little of the feeling with which Moses, after being forty years in the desert, would pray, 'I pray Thee let me go over,'" Deut. 3:25.